


Jeremy

by GE72



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Effects of Bullying, Execution, Fatherhood, Gen, Guilt, Murder Mystery, Police Procedural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-22 11:28:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 19,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22882300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GE72/pseuds/GE72
Summary: (Season 9) Aaron Hotchner witnesses the execution of a serial killer in Washington state, an unsub he helped to capture. Weeks later, a series of murders coincide with the robbery of the serial killer's grave, with the victims being those who knew him when they were younger. The BAU agents head to Washington state to find out if a new serial killer has emerged, or if someone has come back from the dead for revenge.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

_“The boundaries which divide life and death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and the other begins?”_ – Edgar Allan Poe  
__________________________________________

It was six hours before Jeremy Felton was to be executed by the state of Washington.

FBI agent Aaron Hotchner arrived at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington. He and the rest of the Behavioral Analysis Unit were in Spokane, on a case. The case had just wrapped up when Hotchner, the section chief for the BAU, was informed that his presence was required at Walla Walla. The rest of the team headed home on the jet to Quantico, while he took a shuttle flight to Walla Walla.

It was raining when he arrived. The rain was heavy, usual for March, but unusual for this side of Washington state. But it was appropriately dreary as well, since there was an execution was about to take place inside the walls of the prison.

Hotchner walked past the crowd outside the prison, most of which were protesting the death penalty and ignoring the rain. They believed that Felton didn’t deserve to die, no matter how heinous his crimes were.

Of course, they probably didn’t witness firsthand the brutality of Felton’s crimes. Seven years ago, Jeremy Felton had murdered six teenaged boys in the south King County area, in the span of eleven days. The murders were brutal and savage, induced by a simmering rage that finally exploded. 

The Auburn police and King County sheriff deputies, aided by Hotchner, had captured Felton at the end of that spree. Felton offered no resistance upon his arrest.

He was tried and convicted of the murders. The jury took an hour to pronounce him guilty. A few weeks later, it took two hours for a jury to hand down the death penalty. 

That was seven years ago. Six hours from now, Jeremy Felton would die from lethal injection at one minute past midnight.

A prison guard escorted Hotchner to the warden’s office. Inside the office was the warden and the Auburn police detective who had summoned the FBI’s help. Both men were in suits and ties, much like Hotchner.

The warden greeted Hotchner first. “Welcome to Walla Walla State Penitentiary. I’m Jacob Thompson, the warden here.”

Hotchner looked over to the detective. “Good to see you again Captain Pearson.”

Phil Pearson of the Auburn Police Department said, “It’s Deputy Chief Pearson, now.”

Hotchner asked them, “So, what am I doing here?”

Thompson replied, “Jeremy Felton wanted to see you.”

“About what?”

Pearson replied, “He said you’d know.”

Hotchner knew what Felton was talking about it. “He should know what the answer will be.”

“Still, he wants to talk to you,” Thompson said. “A last request, apparently.”

Thompson signaled for a guard to escort Hotchner and Pearson to the holding area for the condemned prisoners. 

“So, how are things in Auburn?” Hotchner asked Pearson.

“Back to normal,” Pearson replied. “Only people who get killed these days in my town are the meth heads in the trailer parks.”

“Good to know.”

“And you. Last I heard, you had a two-year old at home.”

“He’s nine years old now.”

“That’s good. My own son’s playing baseball for his junior high team.”

They approached the cell where Felton had been placed. He was sitting down at a small table, eating his last meal. A steak with fries and corn, and a Pepsi. There were two guards inside the cell with him.

One of the outside guards opened up the cell door. Hotchner and Pearson entered.

Jeremy Felton looked up from last meal. By all accounts, Jeremy Felton did not look like a serial killer. He had dark blond hair, brown eyes, a smooth complexion. He could be the All-American boy, if he had not killed all those people.

He was also twenty five years old. He was convicted and sentenced to death at eighteen, the youngest ever in the state of Washington. His appeals were denied, the last one from four weeks ago.

“Mr. Hotchner,” he said. “Thank you for coming here.” His voice sounded young but was that of resignation, knowing what was coming in the next few hours.

“You’re welcome,” Hotchner returned. “Why did you want to see me?”

Felton asked, “Did you find him?” 

“Find who?”

“My dad.”

“No, we didn’t.” Then Hotchner added, “He’s dead.”

“He’s not dead!” Felton exclaimed, practically jumping out of his seat. The guards stepped forward, but Hotchner held up his hand, waving them off. “He’s not dead!” Felton repeated.

“He has to be,” Hotchner insisted. “We couldn’t find him. Not then, not now. It’s been seven years. By all means, he’s legally dead.”

“He’s not dead!” Felton insisted. “He wouldn’t just go away like that!”

“I agree with you,” Hotchner said. “But we haven’t found any trace of him. We can’t find out what happened to him.”

Felton sat back down in his chair, defeated. “He’s not dead,” he repeated, now on the verge of tears. “He wouldn’t leave me or my mom. He wouldn’t have left me with….him.”

Hotchner knew about who “him” was. Felton didn’t like…”him.” Neither did Hotchner. “Him” was responsible, at least in Hotchner’s eyes and in the eyes of lots of others, for what happened to Felton and his mother.

Felton had a few more bites of his last meal. Finally, he asked, “Did you really look for my father?”

“We did,” Hotchner said. 

“So did I,” Pearson added. “I talked to your aunt Kathy, your mother’s sister. She had no idea where he is either.”

“I know,” Felton said. “She visited me earlier.” Then he added, “She hates ‘him’ more than you realize.”

“I could only imagine,” Pearson said. He then said to Hotchner, “Kathy Kirkman is full of fire and hate towards him for what happened to her sister.”

“Can’t say that I blame her,” Hotchner returned.

The FBI agent looked at Felton, who had finished his meal. “Is that all?”

Felton looked at Hotchner. “I guess so,” he replied. “I just want my dad, you know?” He then asked, “Did you get to say goodbye to him?”

Hotchner nodded. It was kind of a sore subject with him, given his relationship with his father. 

“I just wanted to say goodbye to him,” Felton said. “That’s all.”

Hotchner said, “I’m sorry.”

“I know you tried.” Again, Felton stood up. He extended his hand. “Thank you.”

Hotchner reached out and shook his hand. Felton sat back down, even more resigned to his fate.

The two lawmen left the cell and headed back to the warden’s office. 

“Are you going to stay for the event?” Pearson asked.

Hotchner checked his watch. “I may have to. I have a shuttle flight back to Spokane, then a non-stop back to Washington DC.”

Pearson offered to buy him dinner. The two left the prison and found a place in town for dinner. For two hours, the two walked about anything but the execution of Jeremy Felton.

About nine o’clock, they returned to the prison and waited for the inevitable.

At fifteen minutes to midnight, Hotchner and Pearson were escorted to the viewing area. There were about twenty witnesses seated there, including a newspaper reporter from the Seattle Times, and a TV reporter from a Spokane station. A couple of the parents of Felton’s victims were there as well.

At midnight, the curtain between the viewing area and the gallows parted. Behind the plate glass window, they could see Felton strapped down on the gurney. The warden, Thompson, was inside the room, along with a doctor and a pair of guards. A preist was also there, administering last rites for Felton.

A hypodermic tube had been inserted to one of Felton’s veins. It would inject the potassium chloride into him and bring seven years of agony and anger to an end.

One minute passed after midnight. Thompson nodded for the go ahead. The remote plunger was pushed. Three lights flashed as the lethal poisons were administered.

Hotchner watched Felton’s face as the drugs took effect. He had a blank expression on his face at first, but then slowly began to cry. Seconds passed into minutes as Felton tried to fight and delay the inevitable. 

His eyelids began to flutter, as his mouth began to move. Hotchner watched, as he could read Felton’s lips.

_I’m sorry dad_

__

His eyes closed, finally. A couple of minutes later, the doctor checked his pulse. He nodded at Thompson.

__

It was over. 

__

Jeremy Felton, convicted murderer of six teenaged boys, was dead.

__


	2. Chapter 2

Hotchner tried to do some work on the flight from Spokane to Washington DC, but he couldn’t sustain any focus. After some fits and starts, he finally placed the files back in his briefcase and tried to relax as the plane sped back towards the east. 

Daylight was beginning to break as Hotchner sat back in his seat. The plane wasn’t full, so maybe he could fall asleep a little easier.

He began to relax, but also began to think back to the execution. He had attended a couple of executions before, both as a prosecutor and an agent, but this was the first time he felt sympathy for the condemned man. 

Hotchner tried to sleep as he began to recall the events of Jeremy Felton’s killing spree….

AUBURN, WASHINGTON – November 2007

Hotchner was in Portland for a one day seminar on profiling he was giving. After the seminar, he was alerted to the case and took the next flight to Seattle. The rest of the team, still reeling from the departure of Jason Gideon, was already on another case in North Carolina, so Hotch was flying solo on this case.

Auburn police Captain Phil Pearson and detectives from Auburn and Kent police briefed him on the murders. There had been four murders in the past seven days, all teenaged boys. All had been killed in a variety of ways but they had one thing in common: they were the garden variety school yard bullies.

The first victim got his head slammed and impaled on a wrought iron fence. The second victim was disarmed from a .32 caliber revolver and the unsub emptied the cylinder into his head while he was down on the ground. The third victim was making out with his girlfriend after he threw her little brother out of the house when the unsub interrupted them; he knocked out the girlfriend and when she woke up, her boyfriend was on top of her, with his throat cut. The fourth victim was tossed off an overpass and into traffic below, bouncing off a semi truck and a car before hitting the ground.

Hotchner interviewed the parents of the victims, none of whom would win parent of the year awards. They were either clueless about their sons, or had contributed to their behavior by abusing them.

Hotchner talked to the little brother who was kept out of the house by his older sister, who gave him a description of the unsub – white, dark blond hair, brown eyes, sad looking. He was unkept, as the clothes he wore dirty, and at the time, wet, because it was raining when he met him.

There were prints at the scene of that murder but they weren’t in the AFIS database.

Within 36 hours, Hotchner delivered a profile of the unsub to the local police. He was a teenager himself, and saw himself as an avenging angel, protecting those who were being bullied or intimidated. He probably was bullied himself and abused at home, even though he was physically able to protect himself, but was often overpowered. The build up had led to his rage finally exploding, and going after those beat up younger victims, protecting them when no else would or were able to. 

Hotchner advised local schools to be on the lookout for the unsub, since he was targeting school yard bullies. The schools were placed on alert but it didn’t stop Felton from showing up on the next day at Cascade Middle School and committing his most brutal murder. 

During the lunch hour at the school, the students were outside, when one of them, Mike Lawton, decided to partake in his favorite pastime of hassling and bullying Eric Murray. Lawton, flanked by his two buddies, had come up to Murray and began to shoving him around, taunting and daring him to fight back, while his two friends made sure no one else got involved.

Lawton had knocked Murray to the ground and was about to kick him, when Felton seemingly appeared out of nowhere and threw Lawton to the ground. His two pals to tried to intervene but Felton decked both of them. As the others watched, Felton grabbed Lawton off the ground and struck him a couple of times, but Lawton kept defiantly cursing and taunting, vowing to kill anyone who befriended Murray.

Finally, Felton got Lawton into a submission hold, one arm across his neck and his other hand pressing against his head. He realized other students were watching him, either out of fear or fascination. He then announced to them, “I’m doing something that all you’re all too damn afraid to do! If I catch anyone harassing that boy again, this is what’s going to happen!”

Lawton responded “You’re not stopping me! I’ll do whatever I want to that little wuss! I’m going to fu –“

Those were Lawton’s last words before a loud snap of his neck in front of the other students silenced him and his body fell down from Felton’s grasp, as they were gasps and cries from those who witnessed it. Felton walked off, as the other students ran in the other direction away from him and into the school.

Police, along with agent Hotchner, arrived, and found Lawton’s body where Felton had left it, his eyes and mouth frozen wide open. Students at the scene described the unsub, still wearing dirty clothes, as if he hadn’t been home in a long time. But the students didn’t know who he was.

But Murray knew who he was. His name was Jeremy Felton, a student at Auburn High School. His parents were friends with his parents, but Felton’s mother Julie had died recently. His father James had disappeared five years previously.

Hotch called Penelope Garcia, their technical analyst, back in Quantico for any info on Jeremy Felton. What Garcia found was this: Jeremy Felton was seventeen, and like the students had said, his mother Julie had died recently, from committing suicide. His father had disappeared without a trace five years ago, and police had not been able to find him. Julie had remarried, to a man named Richard Cole. 

Police had been called to the Cole residence a few times since the second marriage on domestic abuse calls. Cole was verbally abusive towards his wife but physically abusive towards Jeremy in that time. Hotch figured that his mother’s death, added to that abuse at the hands of Cole, was his stressor for the killing spree.

Hotchner and Pearson visited the Cole residence, where they found the stepfather, a warehouse foreman, standoffish towards them. Yes, he got into arguments with his wife Julie, and with Jeremy, who refused to accept him as his new father. That led to some heated arguments between the two that led to Cole smacking Jeremy around.

Hotchner talked to teachers who knew Jeremy. He was a kind, gentle soul, who enjoyed life and loved his father, James. He took it rather hard when James disappeared five years ago. But after his mother remarried, that’s when Jeremy began to spiral downward. Not only was he being abused at home, but he was also being bullied at school. One of the teachers at Auburn High School, Debbie Peterson, had recognized the signs of his spiral, and advised the staff that Jeremy was being abused but before anything could be done by the school, Mrs. Peterson had died, as someone killed her and dumped her body in the infamous Green River near the Highway 18 bridge.

During his senior year, Jeremy was further spiraling downward and finally dropped out of school the day of his mother’s suicide. A week later, that’s when the murders started.

The murders ended forty eight hours later at Auburn Riverside High School. It was a Thursday, and a police cruiser driving by the school had spotted Jeremy on the school grounds. Pearson told the officers in the cruiser to wait for backup. 

As Hotchner, Pearson, and other officers rushed to the high school, Jeremy found his next target. Jake Savon was a student but also dealing pot and liked to push around students who didn’t like him. He cornered a student in the boys room nearest the main entrance, but that’s where Jeremy cornered him.

A fight broke in the boys room, just as Hotchner, Pearson, and the police arrived. The student ran out of the boys room, yelling for help. At that moment, there was a gunshot. Savon had brought a gun on campus, and pulled it on Felton. In the struggle, the gun went off.

No one knows what exactly happened next in the boys room, but this much was known at the time: as the police entered the building, Pearson immediately ordered the school on lockdown. Savon came stumbling out, angry and screaming bloody murder. As the police approached him, there was another gunshot. A bullet hit Savon in the back of the head and he fell. Rumor had it that his face hit the ground before the rest of him did, but that was all hearsay.

Jeremy emerged from the boys bathroom, bloodied, and the gun in hand. Officers raised their weapons, but Hotchner demanded that Jeremy put the gun down. A dazed Jeremy dropped the gun, claiming he was sorry.

He was arrested, charged with six counts of aggravated first-degree murder. Even though he was seventeen at the time of his arrest, he would be eighteen when his trial would begin, thus making him eligible for the death penalty.

Hoitchner interrogated Jeremy, and discovered ever since his mother remarried and suffered abuse at the hands of Cole and being bullied by classmates at Auburn High School, he had steadily gone downhill. His mother’s suicide caused him to snap. He was the poster child for abused teens who become criminals. 

Before the interrogation was over, Jeremy asked Hotchner, “Can you find my father? My real father?”

He was eventually tried in King County Superior Court and convicted on all six counts of aggravated first-degree murder. It took the jury an hour to convict Jeremy Felton of the murders.

A couple of weeks after the trial, there was a sentencing hearing to determine if he would be sentenced to death. The defense attorney argued against Jeremy being put to death due to his age, and his emotional well being after years of being abused by Cole.

It took only two hours for the jury to determine Jeremy Felton’s fate. He was sentenced to death.

Felton’s lawyers appealed the verdict twice. Both times, the appeals were turned down.

Seven years later, Jeremy Felton was executed.

_______________________________________

The plane landed at Dulles Airport in Washington DC in the late afternoon. Instead of heading back to Quantico, Hotchner went straight home. His son Jack would be already home from school.

He opened the door to his home, His former sister in law was taking care of Jack, as per the arrangement whenever he left town on a case. The two were watching a DVD on the television. Upon seeing his father, Jack ran up to him and gave him a big hug.

Hotchner embraced his son. He was the reason he did this job, catching the bad guys and putting them away. 

As he hugged his son, he wondered if Jeremy Felton hadn’t lost his father, would be have become a serial killer? 

But what would happen if something happened to him? What would become of Jack? 

He didn’t want to think about that.


	3. Chapter 3

AUBURN, WASHINGTON

It had been two weeks since the execution of Jeremy Felton. Deputy Police Chief Pearson saw his town get back to some sense of normalcy, now that Jeremy was dead. His body was buried in a cemetery west of Auburn. 

There wasn’t much in the way of crime in those two weeks. But that weekend began with a home invasion that ended in a murder. Pearson was confident his detectives could handle it without him. He spent Saturday with his wife and watching his son play baseball for his club team.

There were alternating days of sun and rain that spring in Washington. It was raining Sunday morning when Pearson got a phone call at home just as he was pouring himself a cup of coffee.

“Hey, Chief,” the man on the other end said. “It’s officer Healy. We got a problem.”

Pearson said, “It better be a good one for a Sunday morning.”

“There’s been a robbery.”

“Goodbye officer Healy.”

“It’s at Mountain View Cemetery.”

Pearson let that sink in. “The cemetery?”

“Yes sir.”

“Please tell me it wasn’t grave robbery.”

“It was.”

Within twenty minutes, Pearson had made his way to the cemetery in question. A couple of police cars and an ambulance was there. He quickly went to the site where the officers were around.

He quickly demanded, “Healy, what happened?”

Officer Don Healy replied, “It happened about three this morning.” He pointed to a paramedic tending to a man in his fifties, part of his face bandaged up. “Jake Olmscheid is the caretaker here. At about that time, he’s in his shed over there when his dog starts barking loud enough to be heard in Seattle. He goes outside and sees a light where there isn’t supposed to be one. He heads out there, and he sees one of the graves had been dug up. He turns around but gets a face full of shovel. He wakes up some time later, his dog is licking his face. And the body is gone from the grave.” He added that the caretaker's truck had been stolen as well.

Pearson looked at the grave. “Who got dug up?”

“That’s the part you’re not gonna like,” Healy replied.

Pearson walked over to the grave. He looked at the smooth marble hedge stone. Healy was right, he didn’t like it.

The former occupant of the grave was Jeremy Felton.

____________________________

Tuesday came. The home invasion murder had quickly come to a standstill, and the Auburn police had managed to keep a lid on the grave robbery, at least the name of the person who got removed. The caretaker's truck had been found abandoned near Maple Valley.

Pearson was at his desk when Officer Healy and a plainclothes detective, Bruce Foreman, entered his office. 

“We have a second home break in murder,” Foreman said.

“Great,” Pearson grumbled. “What exactly happened?”

“Same as before. Guy goes home late last night, in this case, one Rob Bowman. He goes inside, and he’s getting something when someone jumps and beats him to death. The whole place was a mess.” 

“We just ran prints,” Healy said. “It’s the same guy from the first break in. But his prints aren’t in the system.”

“But there’s more,” Foreman said. “We found this next to the victim. He lingered on for a while, and managed to write this down before he died.” He handed an evidence bag to Pearson. Inside, there was a piece of paper, a little crumpled but there was a name written on it.

“There was a pen next to Bowman’s hand,” Healy said. “He wrote it.”

“Did you show this to anyone else?” Pearson asked.

“No sir,” Healy said. “But the crime scene techs saw it too.”

“Get them in here. Now.”

“Yes sir.” Both Healy and Foreman left Pearson’s office, as the deputy chief examined the paper inside the evidence bag. It was a name he hoped he was done with.

Jeremy.

_______________________________________

FBI, BEHAVIORIAL ANALYSIS UNIT  
QUANTICO, VIRGINIA

Aaron Hotchner was at his desk in his office, signing his name on field reports, when his phone rang.

“Hotchner.”

“This is deputy chief Pearson in Auburn, Washington.”

“How’s things in Washington state?”

“We may have a problem.” He explained to Hotchner about the two murders and the grave robbing of Jeremy Felton’s remains.

“Who else knows about this?” Hotchner asked.

“Not many,” Pearson replied. “We managed to keep it out of the press for now, but I don’t know how much longer.”

“Do you think the grave robbing and the murders are related?” 

“Possibly,” Pearson replied. “It’s too much of a coincidence that they all happened in the space of five days.”

“Send copies of the files to our technical analyst, Penelope Garcia,” Hotchner said. “I’ll go over the case with my team, and I’ll let you know if we’ll come out there.”

An hour later, Hotchner gathered the BAU agents – David Rossi, Derek Morgan, Spencer Reid, Jennifer “J.J.” Jareau, Alex Blake, and their tech analyst, Penelope Garcia – in the conference room. Hotchner filled them in on what was going on in Auburn, Washington, as the agents perused copies of the case files set out by Garcia. The quirky tech analyst then called up photos on the digital screen with her remote.

“Two murdered and a grave robbery of a serial killer?” asked Reid, the team’s resident genius. “What’s the connection?”

“Second victim wrote down Felton’s name before he died,” Hotchner said.

“Let’s focus on the murder victims,” said Blake, a linguistics professor in addition to being an agent. “What did the two have in common?”

“It says here they were in school together,” Morgan said. “Though Bowman got kicked out of Auburn High School for drug possession, and the first victim, Jeff Walsh, had good grades. Walsh had a good office job in Federal Way.”

“Maybe they have a connection to Jeremy Felton?” J.J. said. “Sounds like they may have known each other.”

“I checked the class list for Auburn High School for what would’ve been Jeremy Felton’s senior year,” Garcia said. “Bowman was in the same class, but Walsh would’ve been a year ahead.”

“Which leads to why, if it had anything to do with it, was Jeremy Felton’s body taken from his grave,” said Rossi. 

“Someone may have taken the body for something to take and auction off,” Reid said. “There’s the market for serial killer memorabilia, always looking for something new.”

“Or it could be someone marking some kind of anniversary or memorial for Jeremy Felton,” Morgan added. “Something like Chloe Kelcher did with Cortland Bryce.” That was from a case in Ohio five years ago, when a woman stole the remains of a serial killer from its grave.

“What about the note left behind by the victim?” J.J. asked. “Are the police sure it was Bowman’s handwriting?”

“Even though he was dying,” Reid said, “Bowman had enough strength to write the name down. It takes about ten percent of hand movement to write something down in such a weakened state, even close to death.”

“Police found a cancelled check and a written phone message in his home,” Hotchner said. “They compared handwritings and determined he wrote Jeremy’s name on the note.”

“So why did he write ‘Jeremy’?” Blake asked.

There was an uneasy silence in the room.

“You don’t think Jeremy Felton came back from the dead and killed him?” J.J. asked Hotchner.

“If fear is the unsub’s plan, then making it look like Jeremy Felton came back from the dead would do it,” Reid said. 

Morgan said, “If that’s the case, then why did the unsub kill Jeff Walsh first, then dig up Felton’s body?”

“So are we going to Washington state?” Rossi asked. 

Upon looking over the evidence and circumstances at first glance, Hotchner wasn’t sure what to think. They had gone on cases where only two people had been killed by the unsub and stopped him. This was kind of like the same thing but whoever the unsub was, he had taken things a step further by taking a dead body from the grave, and a serial killer’s body at that.

“It’s your call,” Morgan said.

Hotchner looked at the screen, which displayed the crime scenes, as well as a photo of Jeremy Felton.

He finally said, “Wheels up in thirty.”

______________________

Before he left his office, Hotchner called his former sister in law, Jessica Brooks, to let her know that he was going out of town and to take care of his son Jack, as per their agreement.

“Is Jack there?” he asked.

“School’s not over yet,” she replied.

“I’ll call later then. Tell him I love him. Thanks. Bye.”

Hotchner hung up the phone and headed to the jet.


	4. Chapter 4

The Gulfstream Jet landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport at 5 p.m., right in the middle of Seattle’s infamous rush hour traffic. On the flight, Hotchner rehashed the details of the original case involving Jeremy Felton. 

Driving SUVs allotted from the Seattle field office, it took more than an hour for the agents to get from the airport to the south King County city of Auburn, as they made their way slowly down the 167 Freeway in the Auburn Valley at the same time as everyone else was seemingly leaving Seattle.

Deputy Chief Pearson was waiting when they finally arrived at the Auburn Police Station. “Glad you make it here,” he said as he shook hands with Hotchner. 

“Any developments since we talked this morning?” Hotchner asked.

“Word got out that Jeremy Felton’s body was stolen from its grave,” Pearson replied. “It was on the six o’clock news. But nobody’s saying that the ghost of Jeremy Felton was coming back from the dead.”

The agents were set up in a conference room next to the detectives’ bullpen, files on the table and, photos of the victims pinned up on a board. Quickly, they made their strategy.

“Dave, you and Alex look over the last crime scene,” Hotchner instructed. “Morgan and Reid, go to the medical examiner’s office. Me and JJ will go over the files here.”

“We have Rob Bowman’s brother here if you want to talk to him,” Pearson said to them.

“We will,” Hotchner replied.

The agents dispersed on their assignments.

______________________________

At the coroner’s office inside Auburn Medical Center, Morgan and Reid looked over the corpse of Rob Bowman.

“It was a straight up beating,” the coroner, Doctor Shawn Dickson said. “Whoever did this was relentless.”

“There’s multiple bruises over his face,” Reid noted. “He was merciless as well.”

“Sounds like he was taken by surprise,” Morgan added. He asked Dr. Dickson, “Was Jeff Walsh found the same way?”

“Both victims had the crap beat out of them and then some,” Dickson replied. “Both died from multiple blunt force traumas to the head and body. Both bodies had signs of internal bleeding brought upon by the traumas.

“Definite rage,” Reid said. “Anything stand out about these victims?”

Dickson answered, “When I examined Walsh’s body at the scene, the first thing I noticed were his eyes.”

“His eyes?”

“Even though he was beat up, his eyes were wide open. I mean wide open.”

“How so?"

“Well, don’t take this the wrong way,” Dickson said, “but his eyes were frozen wide open. He had this look on his face.”

“What kind of look?” Morgan asked.

Dickson replied, “The kind that looks like he had just seen a ghost.”

_____________________________________

At the crime scene, a small house near the White River, near Game Farm Park, Rossi and Blake examined the place where Rob Bowman was killed. It was already dark in town. The house was barely visible from the road, even in the daylight, as it was obscured by trees.

“Looks like our unsub came through the back door,” Blake noted. “There’s signs he just kicked the door in.”

“Took Bowman by surprise,” Rossi added, as he looked around the mess that was the living room. A coffee table had been broken into bits, where Bowman’s body had landed and would eventually die. Other signs of a struggle included overturned chairs, broken glass, and a bookend on the floor that had some of the victims’ blood.

“Looks like he started with the bookend and finished him off with his bare hands,” Blake said. 

“And the police found prints, but nothing in the system,” Rossi added. He went over to the front door. “Our unsub left through here.”

“And out into the open,” Blake said. “Anyone who saw out on the street probably didn’t think much of him, just a guy walking down the street.” Then Blake added, “If it really was Jeremy Felton, ghost or not, somebody would have said something.”

“You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?” Rossi asked.

“No,” Blake replied, “but somebody wants somebody to believe that.”

__________________________________________

Brian Bowman was a few years older than late brother. He sported a crew cut, courtesy of the U.S. Army, and worked up at Boeing. Even though Rob was his brother, there had been some tension between him before Rob’s death.

“We may not have gotten along that well,” Brian Bowman said, “but he was still my brother. He had made some outright dumb choices in life, and I tried to help him. He wouldn’t take it.”

Hotchner and J.J. were talking to him inside Auburn Police Headquarters.

“What kind of dumb choices are we talking about?” J.J. asked.

“Smoking dope, drinking too much, not taking no for an answer from a girl,” Bowman replied. “That kind of stuff. I know he wasn’t a saint but he was still my brother.”

Hotchner could relate, given the relationship between him and his younger brother Sean.

“Did you see him in the days before he died?” Hotchner asked.

“He came by my place a week before he died,” Bowman replied. “He seemed all right.”

“You two talk about anything?”

“The Seahawks, a little, but then he started talking about Jeremy Felton, you know? He started talking about how Jeremy killed all those people, that he got executed and that the world is a better place because of it.”

“We understand that Jeremy and your brother went to school together,” J.J. said. “How well did they know each other?”

“I’m not sure,” Bowman replied. “I was already in the Army at the time, and I spent a tour in Iraq. I didn’t know what Jeremy Felton had done until I got back to Fort Lewis. I wish I could be of more help.”

“You’ve helped enough,” Hotchner said. The agents thanked Brian Bowman, and he left. Afterwards, they talked with Deputy Chief Pearson.

“I’d like to speak to those involved in the trial, specifically the defense witnesses,” Hotchner said to Pearson. “I also like to get a transcript of the trial.”

“What for?” Pearson asked.

“To get a better understanding of Jeremy Felton.”

“What’s there to understand?” Pearson replied. “He was smacked around by his stepfather, got beat up at school, his mom commits suicide, went crazy, and killed six people. What more could there possibly be?”

“You’d be surprised,” Hotchner said. “There’s always something more.”

________________________________________

At a bar along Auburn Way, just outside the city limits, Tom Bornowski and Nick Leland were at a table inside, downing beers. This wasn’t light beer, or any of the local IPAs the Northwest was known for. This was real beer, the kind you can down a six pack of and still be a man about it.

The waitress just brought them a third beer and they decided to have a toast.

“To Rob Bowman,” Tom said.

“To Rob Bowman,” Nick repeated.

“And to Jeff Walsh,” Tom added. 

“To Jeff Walsh,” Nick repeated. They clicked glasses and drank a good amount of the beer.

Into the bar walked an acquaintance of theirs, coming right over to their table.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“It’s all good,” Leland replied.

“Just remembering some good friends,” Bornowski added. 

“Thought I give you heads up. Cops are looking into Bowman’s death.”

“Of course they are,” Bornowski said. “Why wouldn’t they?”

“They called the feds in.” Then he added, “Did you hear about that grave robbery the other day?”

“What?” Bornowski asked. “Who got dug up?”

“Jeremy Felton.”

“He’s dead,” Leland replied.

“I know, but somebody still dug him up.”

“You think whoever dug him up is the one who killed Rob and Jeff?” Bornowski asked.

“Maybe. Just watch your backs.”

“What if the cops wanna talk to us?” Leland asked.

“Talk to them. We did nothing wrong. Not then. Not now.” He looked around. “Have you guys talked to Kevin?”

“Haven’t seen him in a few days,” Leland replied. “Why?”

“Tell him what’s going on.”

“We will.”

“Good.” With that, Richard Cole turned around and left the bar.


	5. Chapter 5

Though the sun hadn’t risen yet on Wednesday, Hotchner called his son from his hotel room in the Auburn Holiday Inn. It would be about seven-thirty back east, so Jack would be getting ready for school with help from his aunt Jessica.

“Hi Jack.”

“Hi daddy. Where are you?”

“I’m in a town called Auburn, Washington.”

“Looking for more bad guys?”

“I am.”

“When will you be home?”

“Soon.”

“I have to go to school now. ‘Bye dad.”

“’Bye Jack. I love you.”

Hotchner hung up the phone and tried to get some more sleep.

________________________________________________

The agents had breakfast at the hotel, then returned to the police station at nine o’clock. Pearson was waiting for them inside the conference room. 

“Here’s a copy of the transcript for the Felton case,” he said, handing over a sheaf of papers to Hotchner. “Hope you find what you’re looking for.”

Hotchner immediately went through the papers. 

“You look possessed, man,” Morgan said. “What exactly are you looking for?”

“I’ll know when I find it,” he replied. Suddenly, he stopped, and said, “I’m going to talk to Kathy Kirkman, Julie Felton’s sister, then Richard Cole. Morgan, you and J.J. go to Auburn High School, find out who our victims hung out with. Alex, Reid, go to Jeff Walsh’s place of employment and find out anything else.”

The agents nodded and left, leaving Hotchner with Rossi. 

“Does Hotch seem okay to you?” Alex asked as they left the police headquarters.

“He’s tightly wound, more than usual,” Reid added.

“That’s for sure,” Morgan said.

Inside the conference room, Hotchner kept going through the papers.

“Something going on with you?” Rossi asked.

“No,” Hotchner replied. “Why do you ask?”

“You seem a little wound up. More than usual.”

“I’m fine Dave.” Hotchner picked up his cell phone and dialed up Garcia back in Quantico.

“Speak and be recognized,” Garcia greeted over the phone from her computer lair.

“Garcia, need a couple of addresses, home and work,” Hotchner said. “One for Kathy Kirkman. The other for Richard Cole. Both here in Washington state.”

“Coming up,” Garcia replied. “Check your phones in a minute or two.”

“Thanks Garcia.” He then said to Rossi, “Let’s go.”

____________________________________

Auburn High School had one of the biggest student populations in the state. It had recently undergone renovations to bring everything up to date, replacing the outer walls from plaster to brick. A new set of baseball and softball fields were next to the school, while its football stadium was across the street, standing majestically in this neighborhood.

Inside, Morgan and J.J. talked to the principal, asking if there was a teacher who had known Jeremy Felton. The principal directed them to Tammy Englestrom, a social studies and history teacher. They talked to her during her planning period.

“I was in my second year here at Auburn,” Mrs. Englestrom said. “Jeremy seemed like such a good boy. He did the best he could under the circumstances.”

“Circumstances being his stepfather and his mother’s suicide,” J.J. said.

“Exactly,” Mrs. Englestrom replied.

“Did you meet either parent?” Morgan asked.

“Neither one,” the teacher replied. “Glad I didn’t meet the second husband.”

“How well did you know Jeremy?” J.J. asked.

“No better than the next student,” Mrs. Englestrom replied. “I had him for a class, and I noticed how much he was struggling. Not just with the work, but with everything. I only heard bits and pieces about what his home situation was like. He tried his best, but with everything going on around him, it all became too much for him.”

“What about Debbie Peterson?” J.J. asked. “How well did you know her?”

“She was kind of a mentor to me,” she replied. “I saw how well she handled her students. They all respected her.”

“Not everyone,” Morgan said. 

Mrs. Engelstrom shook her head. “When I heard she was murdered, I automatically thought who might have done this.”

“Either Rob Bowman or Jeff Walsh?” 

“Likely, but how and why, I don’t know.”

“Who were they friends with?” J.J. asked.

“Well, they were tight with these two other students,” Mrs. Engelstrom replied. “Nick Leland and Tom Bornowski. Now those two, I was glad to see leave. They seemed to piss everybody off in the halls, students and teachers. Nick had good grades but was always in trouble. Tom played football, but got kicked off the team when the coaches found he was bullying some students. Nick did too.”

“Was one of those students Jeremy?” Morgan asked.

“He was,” Mrs. Engelstrom replied. “Those boys were trouble from day one. Every day they were causing trouble.”

“Did Jeremy have any friends?” J.J. asked.

“If he did, I didn’t know who? He was always by himself. I think he tried to reach out but nothing happened.”

“Did he reach out to Debbie Peterson?” Morgan asked.

“I know she had Jeremy in one of her classes,” she replied. “He seemed at ease when he was in her class. She did the best she could with him.

“Once, Jeremy was walking into her class when Nick and Tom and this other student came up from behind and just shoved him down. No reason why, they just shoved him down. Mrs. Peterson went after them and read them the riot act. She tried to make them apologize. They told her to stick it. The three of them wound up in the principal’s office.”

“Three?” asked J.J.

“Kevin Jarrett,” Mrs. Engelstrom answered. “He hung out with them. But unlike the others, Kevin realized he screwed up. Tom and Nick had no remorse, even when their parents read them the riot act as well.”

“You remember it pretty well,” Morgan pointed out.

“I know. I remember it because two days after that happened, that’s when Debbie was murdered.”

______________________________________________

Kevin Jarrett had a few days off from his job at the Boeing plant in Renton. His wife Beth was at her secretary job down at an office in Puyallup, while it was his turn to watch over his one-year old son.

Jarrett walked out of his home to get the mail when a truck pulled up in front. Out of the truck came Nick Leland and Tom Bornowski.

“Hi, Kevin,” they said.

“Hi,” Kevin said back, somewhat reluctantly. “What’s going on?”

“Just seein’ how you’re doin’,” Leland said.

“Seen any ghosts lately?” Bornowski joked.

“Ghosts?”

“You know, dead guys come back to life,” Leland said.

“Guys like Jeremy Felton?”

“Exactly!”

“No,” Jarrett said. “I’m not worried. He’s not the one we should be worried about anyway.”

“Then who?”

“The guy who dug him up.”

“We can take care of him,” Bornowski said. “Hey, Richard said he hasn’t seen you in a while.”

“Unlike you two, I have a job and a son.”

“Let’s hear it for the man of the year,” chided Leland.

“He wants to know how you’re doing,” Bornowski said.

Jarret replied, “Just tell him I’m fine.”

“He’d rather hear it from you personally,” Leland said.

“I’ll see him when I see him, okay? I gotta go.” With that, Kevin Jarrett went back inside.

He watched from the living room window, as Bornowski and Leland departed in the truck. His son was upstairs, asleep. 

Jarrett turned his attention to his son. He was named Micah, after the Biblical prophet. According to his teachings and prophecies, Micah warned that unless Israel repented from their sins, their land would fall, although rise again in glory.

Kevin Jarrett knew he had sinned, and because of it, a classmate went and killed six people. Unlike Tom and Nick, he had a conscience. He was the only of their little group who had cleaned up his act, got married, got a good job, and started a family.

But it wasn’t enough. He knew one day that someone would call him into account for what he had to Jeremy Felton. 

And in his mind, that day was fast approaching.


	6. Chapter 6

Kathy Kirkman worked as a secretary in the administration office of the Maple Valley School District, some miles up the road from Auburn. On the way up to Maple Valley, Hotchner and Rossi drove on Highway 18 over the Green River, the stream where serial killer Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, had dumped his victims in the 80’s and 90’s. Both men had been there a couple of times earlier in their careers.

It was eleven o’clock when Rossi and Hotchner visited her in the district office. Hotchner had met Kathy Kirkman during the initial investigation of her nephew Jeremy Felton.

“What else can I tell you?” Kathy Kirkman said to them in her office. “You know what I know. Richard Cole was a jerk, smacked Jeremy around, and made my sister commit suicide.”

“You haven’t heard from him since?” Hotchner asked.

“Last time I saw him was a couple of months ago,” she replied. “They had just turned down Jeremy’s last appeal. He was in parking lot of the Safeway in Auburn. I went right up to him, and asked if he was happy about what he had done to my sister. He tried to give me this BS about how much he loved Julie. I told him he was full of it and what he could do with himself.”

“I would have just hit him,” Rossi said.

“I wanted to shoot him,” Kathy said back. “But I don’t have a gun.” She then added, “Had I shot him, I would’ve done the world a favor. And I don’t want him anywhere near my sister again.”

“How so?”

“I have her ashes. After she died, I took control of her remains. I have an urn back home, so she can be close to me, not near him. It’s over my fireplace”

“Do you have any idea what happened to Jeremy’s father?” Hotchner asked.

“James? I don’t know then, and I don’t know now,” Kathy replied. “I’m pretty sure Richard had him killed, or something like that. How he did it, I don’t know, not even why.”

It was a question Hotchner asked himself seven years ago. Where was James Felton? And did Richard Cole have anything to do with it?

“I keep thinking if he hadn’t disappeared, and Julie never married Richard, then Jeremy wouldn’t have turned into a murderer,” Kathy said. 

Hotchner could only shake his head. Circumstances had turned an innocent looking boy into a cold blooded murderer in five years. If James Felton had not disappeared, Jeremy Felton could’ve been an All-American boy working at Microsoft or Boeing.

He asked Kathy about the murders in Auburn, and the victims.

“No, I don’t know them,” Kathy replied. “But if they pushed Jeremy around, I think it’s karma coming back for them and biting them in the ass for what they did to him. I just wish it would happen to Richard Cole.” She then asked, “What does this have to do with Jeremy?”

“Maybe something, maybe nothing,” Rossi replied. “But we have an unsub who’s trying to make it look like Jeremy has come back from the dead to take revenge.”

“I wish I could help you,” Kathy said, “but I don’t know anything. All I want to do is get on with my life.” Then she added, “And I want Richard Cole to drop dead.”

Rossi looked at a framed photo on her desk. It was of James and Julie Felton in a wooded area, as James held his son Jeremy, who was five years old at the time.

“Where was this?” he asked.

“That was near Shadow Lake,” Kathy replied, “just outside of town. James had bought some property there. After he disappeared, Richard convinced Julie to sell the land. I don’t know what happened to the money, but I’m guessing Richard kept it all to himself. James wanted to build his dreamhouse there.”

“Thanks for your time,” Hotchner said. Him and Rossi said their goodbyes, and left the Maple Valley School Administration building.

_________________________________________

“We talked with Jeff Walsh’s employers here in Federal Way,” Alex Blake said over the cell phone speaker. “They said he was a good worker.”

“No troubles with co-workers?” Hotchner asked. He and Rossi were driving back to Auburn on Highway 18, as they spoke with Blake and Reid over the speaker on Rossi’s cell phone.

“None,” Reid replied. “We talked to his co-workers and they said he was a good guy. When we told them that he bullied Jeremy Felton back in school, they were kind of taken aback.”

“Sounds like a sociopath who could hide his bad side,” Rossi said.

“Perhaps,” Reid said. “From what I gathered, it sounds like Jeff was nice to everyone but Jeremy Felton.”

“Polite to everyone but one,” Blake added. “Those are the worst kind.” She then added, “We’re headed back to the police station.”

“Thanks,” Hotchner said. “We’ll see you there.”

Hotchner and Rossi were headed to a landfill outside of Auburn where Richard Cole worked as a field supervisor. The landfill was where garbage trucks from the south county dumped their waste.

“What was he like the first time you talked to him?” Rossi asked, as they parked and got out of the SUV into the cold, rainy day.

“He was a self-controlling delusional narcissist,” Hotchner replied.

“But how do you really feel about him?” 

“He was an abusive parent who, in all likelihood, drove Jeremy Felton into what he became.”

Rossi knew the type. Parents who physically or psychologically abusive to their children, then wonder why they became criminals, claiming that society was to blame, not them. These were the kind of people that Hotchner and Rossi wanted to lock up for being bad parents, but that was never the case. For one, there was no law calling for locking up bad parents who raised serial killers, deliberately or otherwise, and two, they were usually the unsub’s first victims.

Richard Cole was directing a truck to back up and dump its load into a pit. He stood about six feet tall, with black hair, and stubble that had been there for three days. He was wearing a coat over his otherwise dirty work clothes. 

He looked over at the agents as they approached him. He looked at Hotchner with particular disgust, remembering him like a bad flashback.

“Richard Cole,” Rossi said. 

“That’s me,” he replied. He looked at Hotchner. “You again?”

“Mr. Cole,” Hotchner said back. The air temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees around the two of them, and it was already cold to begin with.

“What brings you here?” Cole looked at Hotchner. “Specifically, him.”

“Didn’t you hear?” Hotchner responded. “Somebody dug up your stepson.”

“And you think I have him?”

“I doubt it. You didn’t want him then, you probably don’t want him now.”

“Look, whatever it is you have to say, just say it and get the hell out,” Cole sneered. “I have to work for a living.”

“Two people are dead, and Jeremy’s being dug up has something to do with it,” Rossi said. “Any ideas why?”

Cole replied, “Who knows, who cares.”

“I expected as much,” Hotchner said. “Let’s go Dave.” The two agents turned to leave.

“Just what exactly do you want me to say?” Cole suddenly said to them. 

Hotchner turned around to face him. He replied tersely, “That you loved smacking your wife and Jeremy around, and drove Julie to suicide and turned your stepson into a murderer. That would be a start.” Hotchner’s response caught Rossi off guard.

Cole looked at Hotchner. “Hey, believe it or not,” he protested, “I actually loved Julie. I tried to make the best of it. But even after marrying me, I felt I had to compete with the memory of her first husband.”

“So you hit her to remind her that he wasn’t around anymore,” Hotchner countered. Rossi noticed a touch of anger in his voice. “The same with Jeremy.”

“Believe what you want,” Cole said. “Maybe if he just accepted me, Jeremy would still be here.”

“Maybe if you never married Julie Felton, they’d both be still alive.”

“I don’t have time for this,” Cole finally said. “Both of you get the hell out of here.”

“Gladly,” Rossi said. “We’ll let you alone to grieve.”

“Just tell me this,” Hotchner said. “Where is James Felton?”

Cole looked at Hotchner. “Excuse me?”

“Where is he? Do you know where he is?”

“How should I know?”

There was a tense silence between Hotchner and Cole.

Cole finally demanded, “Are you accusing me of something?”

“James Felton is happily married, and then, he disappears,” Hotchner replied. “You marry his widow, and abuse her and her son every chance you get. She commits suicide, her son turns into a murderer.” He paused then said, “And you wonder why people don’t like you.”

“Go to hell,” Cole snapped.

Hotchner responded, “Is that where you tried to send James Felton?”

Cole threw his clipboard down and took a step at Hotchner. Rossi stepped between the two of them.

“You don’t really want to do that,” he warned Cole. “Assault on a federal agent is at least seven years in prison. With or without a broken nose.”

Cole backed off, still eyeing Hotchner with contempt. Rossi took his friend back to the SUV and drove off.

On the road back to Auburn, Rossi pulled over the SUV and parked along the side. He looked at Hotchner, who was still doing a slow burn from his confrontation with Cole.

“Is something wrong with you?” Rossi asked.

“What makes you think there’s something wrong?” Hotchner replied.

“This isn’t like you Hotch. In all the time I’ve known you, this is the first time you’ve came close to losing it. They’re the psychos, not you.”

“Cole’s not a psycho. He made one.”

Rossi looked at Hotchner. “Is this about Jack?”

Hotchner tried to settle down. “I see all these killers, dealt a bad hand right from birth, and they are who they are. That I get. But someone like Jeremy Felton comes along, and he’s a good kid until bad things happen to him because of his stepfather, and he becomes a serial killer. And Richard Cole seems to revel in that fact.”

“So, what does this have to do with Jack?”

Hotchner tried to calm himself down more. “Ever since Haylie died, I’ve tried to do my best to raise Jack. I do the best job I can as a single parent, and still do the job here. But what if something happens to me, and then something happens to Jack?”

“Like turn into the very thing you fight against every day?”

“I saw what happened to Jeremy Felton,” Hotchner said. “A good boy turned into a monster by circumstances beyond his control, but under someone else's control. Cole probably did kill James Felton, but we don’t know how or why, or even if he did. And if that can happen to Jeremy, how easy can it happen to Jack if I’m not around?”

“Jack is a good kid,” Rossi said. “He’ll come out all right, whether you’re they’re to guide him or not. I believe he’ll make the right decisions.”

Hotchner just shook his head. “I know. But after seeing what happened to Jeremy Felton and how fast it happened, I want to be sure.”

________________________________________

It was close to five o’clock when Kathy Kirkman arrived at her home in Covington. She was alone, but only because her husband, an Army sergeant, was currently serving with his unit in Afghanistan. His truck, a worn but dependable Ford, was parked just off the driveway.

Once inside the house, she took her purse to her bedroom and placed it on the bed along with her coat. After that, she went to the kitchen, passing by the fireplace mantle where the urn of her sister’s remains was placed. She opened up her refrigerator and reached for a bottled water –

She heard the footsteps as soon as she touched the bottle. She instinctively froze, them slowly pulled her hand out, bottle in hand, and turned around.

There was a figure standing, framed in the entrance of the kitchen against the light. The figure’s facial features were obscured by the darkness.

The figure took a step forward. Kathy immediately realized who it was.

She said, “My God, it is you.”

He stood there before he finally said something.

“Kathy….”

She looked at the person and said, “You know, you look pretty alive for a dead man.”


	7. Chapter 7

Hotchner and Rossi returned to the Auburn Police headquarters around five o’clock. Hotchner went directly into the conference room, where Deputy Chief Pearson was. He closed the door behind him, as the other agents gathered around Rossi.

“What’s up with Hotch?” Morgan asked. Rossi recounted their encounter with Richard Cole at the landfill. 

“Hotch believes six people are dead because of Cole,” Rossi said. “Can’t say that I blame him.”

“So he’s upset,” Blake said. “That’s all?”

“You’re not a father,” Rossi said. “He’s worried about Jack and what if he becomes one of the monsters we have to track down.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Reid said. “He’s a good father.”

“I know. He wouldn’t be one if he didn’t worry.”

“So what’s the plan now?” J.J. asked.

“Depends,” Rossi said. “What have you guys learned?” The agents compared notes about their interviews about the current victims.

“We should talk to the people who pushed around Jeremy back in high school,” Morgan suggested. “We got their names. Garcia found their addresses. They’re all local.”

The agents divvied up the names. Morgan and J.J. would talk to Tom Bornowski; Alex and Reid would go see Nick Leland, Hotchner and Rossi would see Kevin Jarrett.

Inside the conference room, Hotchner and Pearson began going over the evidence in the murders.

“Your man, Morgan, told me about those kids who pushed around Jeremy Felton back in school,” Pearson said. “I’ve busted both Bornowski and Leland for drunk and disorderly. Those two didn’t take to adulthood very well.”

“And Kevin Jarrett?” Hotchner asked.

“Never had the pleasure,” Pearson replied. “Probably straightened himself out.”

A few moments passed, before Hotchner asked, “Do you worry about your son?”

“I do,” Pearson replied. “I wouldn’t be a good father if I didn’t. Why do you ask?”

“This case, seeing how Jeremy Felton went from a good boy and turned into a serial killer.”

“I know. I’ve known guys who I went to school growing up with in Puyallup, we all started out the same. Most of us turned out to be good people. But there always one or two, who, by no fault of their own, go bad. They turn out that way because of circumstances beyond their control, like a parent dying or losing their job, falling in with the wrong crowd, that kind of thing.”

“Are you afraid your own son might end up like that?” Hotch asked.

“Not if I can help it.”

“Same here.”

“So, agent Hotchner, what kind of person are we dealing with?” Pearson asked. “What kind of person kills two people and digs up a dead serial killer? A serial killer, ironically, they made. But he’s also not Jeremy Felton.”

“This person is not Jeremy Felton,” Hotchner replied. “Our unsub is in his late thirties, early forties, but has basic knowledge of Felton’s crimes. He seems to know which persons teased and bullied Jeremy in school, and has singled them out. His goals are revenge oriented.

“Our unsub was probably was bullied in school as well,” Hotchner continued, “but was able to overcome it, both physically and emotionally. He feels a kinship to Jeremy, close enough that maybe they knew each other somehow. He feels like he owes Jeremy something.”

Pearson asked, “But why dig him up?”

“As I said, he probably owed Jeremy something,” Hotchner replied. “His grave robbing, represents, to the unsub, that he is going to take care of him, even after death.” 

“All this for a dead guy?” Pearson said. “Look, I felt some sympathy for Felton because of what happened to him when he was younger, but the way he killed all those people just pushed that all aside. And when we or you catch this whack job, I won’t have any sympathy for him, either.”

“I understand. But you see, the worst kind of serial killers are the one who are more sympathetic than their victims. Like Jeremy Felton, he was a good person who got turned into a monster by unfortunate circumstances or the people he is killing, whether they are the very people who did that to him or surrogates for the people he wants to kill.” 

“And this unsub, he falls into this category?”

Hotchner replied, “I’m afraid so.” He could name off a couple of killers who were like that – Johnny McHale a few years back, Samantha Malcolm a couple of years after that, were two that came to mind – but they were very few and far between.

____________________________________

Kevin Jarrett was watching the news on the TV when there was a knock on the front door.

As soon as he opened it, he regretted it.

“Hi Kev,” Richard Cole greeted.

“What do you want?” 

“What, no ‘Hi Richard’?”

“Hi Richard. What do you want?”

“Just seein’ how you’re doing. So how are you doing?”

“I’m fine. Just me and my wife – “

“Good.” Cole tried to walk into the house, but Jarrett stopped him. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Another time maybe,” Jarrett said.

“Can’t I see an old friend?”

“Don’t kid yourself. I regret meeting you. Same with Tom and Nick.”

Cole looked at him. “What’s the matter with you? Afraid the ghost of Jeremy is gonna come after you?”

“Ghost?” Jarrett returned. “Whoever killed Jeff and Rob was no ghost.” He looked around nervously, then said to Cole, “You know who’s doing this.”

That sentence seemed catch Cole’s attention. “He’s dead.”

“You sure about that?”

“He’s dead,” Cole repeated. 

“Good bye.” Jarrett tried to close the door, but Cole stopped him.

“Don’t you say anything to the cops,” Cole warned.

“About what?” Jarrett said back. “About how me and you guys liked to push Jeremy around? I think the cops already know about that.”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

A chill went through Jarrett’s body. “I wasn’t there. I had nothing to do with that.”

“You know and that makes you just as guilty.”\

“What the hell were you guys thinking when you – “

“Kevin,” his wife called out. “Dinner’s ready!”

“In a minute!” Jarrett called back. 

“Remember what I said,” Cole warned. With that, he turned around and left. Jarrett watched as he got back in his truck and left.

Jarrett went to the dining room where his wife Beth was waiting with their one year old son for dinner.

“Who was at the door?” Beth asked.

“Richard Cole.”

“What did he want?”

Jarrett looked down before he answered. “My conscience.”

__________________________________

Blake and Reid knocked on the door of Nick Leland. He lived in a small house south of Auburn just a couple of blocks off Highway 164. According to Garcia’s computer background search, Leland worked as a driver for the state Department of Transportation, running the street sweepers in the summer and driving snow plows when it snowed. He was on probation with his employers, because of a drunk and disorderly conduct charge.

Leland opened the door. Both agents identified themselves. “Can we please come in?” Blake asked. Leland let them inside.

“We’d like to ask you about a couple of friends of yours,” Blake said, as they went to the living room. “Jeff Walsh and Rob Bowman.” 

“I knew them in school,” Leland replied. “I hadn’t seen them in a while, though. I heard about them being murdered. Is that true?”

“It is,” Reid replied. “Any ideas on who would want to hurt them?”

Leland shook his head. “No.”

“Are you friends with Tom Bornowski?” Blake asked.

“I am. We’re stay in touch. In fact, we had a couple of beers the other night.”

“How well did you know Jeremy Felton?” Reid asked.

“The guy who was executed?” Leland replied. “Creepy. Go to school with a guy and he turns out to be a psycho. Go figure.”

“We heard you like to push him around in school,” Blake said. “You and Tom, as well as Jeff and Rob.”

“Hey, it happens. We’ve moved on.” Leland looked at the agents. “Do you think that has something to do with this?”

“It’s possible,” Reid said. Blake looked around the home from where she was standing. It was small, quaint, a little disheveled, but nothing out of the ordinary. 

“Looking for something?” Leland asked.

“Just looking,” Blake replied. “So, you knew Jeremy Felton. You don’t regret what you did?”

“C’mon, like I said, it’s in the past. Some people get pushed around, others do the pushing around. It happens.”

Blake asked. “What do you for a living?”

“I drive for the state department of transportation,” Leland replied. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Just making conversation,” Reid said. “Anything to add Blake?”

“No. I’m good,” she replied. Blake took a business card out and handed it to Leland. “If you think of anything else, please give us a call.”

Leland nodded. Blake and Reid left the house and got in their SUV.

“He hasn’t moved on,” Blake said to Reid. 

“I got the impression he liked bullying Felton,” Reid added. “I noticed you were looking around. What for?”

“Being vigilant,” Blake replied. “After my brother got attacked while talking to Charles Gates, you want to be sure the unsub isn’t in the house with you lying in wait.” That instance was from a case the BAU worked in Kansas City with Blake’s police detective brother earlier last fall.

“Good point.” The two drove off back to Auburn.

_______________________________________

Richard Cole sat in his truck, watching the house from a distance. The lights were on inside, so he knew she was home. The only question was, for him, was she alone? 

He sat there, watching the house like the proverbial hawk, for something to prove his suspicions correct. The only car in the driveway was Kathy’s silver Nissan Rogue.

Most of the lights were shining in front of the main windows in the front of the house. There was no discernable movement he could see from Kathy Kirkman, or her house guest, if she had one.

He had been there for the better part of an hour. It was close to eight o’clock and already dark when his cell phone rang.

“Hello?” he answered.

At first, there was nothing. Then something barely audible. 

“Richard….”

“Hello?”

Then the line went dead.

He checked the number of the person who had just called. It was Tom Bornowski. 

Cole drove off into the night.

_________________________________________

Morgan and J.J. arrived at the home of Tom Bornowski, on the side of a hill near Covington. It was small, nestled between some trees just off of one of the main streets in this community next to Auburn. It was just before eight o’clock. The two of them walked up to the house, a beat up Chevy next to the structure.

Morgan knocked on the door. There was no answer.

“Not home?” J.J. asked.

“That, or he’s in the bathroom.” Morgan replied.

J.J. peaked inside the window. Shades had been drawn on the inside of the house. There was a sliver of space between the curtains so J.J. could see inside. It looked like the living room where she could see – 

“Derek!” she barked as she quickly pulled out her service weapon. Morgan did the same, as he pounded on the door with his other hand. “Tom Bornowski! Open up! FBI!” No answer.

Morgan reared back and kicked the door open. Both he and J.J. entered the house, their guns pointed in front of them.

The first thing they saw was Tom Bornowski’s body, face down, a small pool of blood forming around him. His right arm was extended, his hand covering his cell phone. They could hear a beeping sound coming from the phone, which signified the line was dead, just like Bornowski.


	8. Chapter 8

Hotchner and Rossi knocked on the door of Kevin Jarrett’s home in Kent. A woman answered the door.

“We’d like to speak to Kevin Jarrett,” Hotchner said, as he and Rossi showed their identification to her.

“I’m his wife Beth,” the woman replied. “What is this about?”

“Who is it Beth?” Kevin Jarrett came up to the door.

“FBI,” she replied. Her husband lost a little color in his face upon hearing those words. 

“May we come in?” Hotchner asked. Beth Jarrett let the agents into the house and had them sit on the sofa. 

“What is this all about?” Beth Jarrett asked.

“We’re helping the Auburn police in a murder investigation,” Hotchner replied. “Did you know Jeremy Felton?”

A little more color left Kevin Jarrett’s face. “I did,” he managed to reply. Both agents noticed he was not holding up well.

“The murder victims were people who knew him,” Rossi said. “People who used to push him around and bully him in high school.”

“And I should know,” Kevin Jarrett interjected. “I was one of them.”

“You’re being very forthright,” Hotchner pointed out.

“I know.” Jarrett continued. “When Jeremy got arrested for those murders years ago, I sat back and realized what I did to him. Me and my so called friends did that to him. We turned him into some kind of monster.” He looked like he was about to burst into tears, and wanted to, as if doing so would cleanse his soul of guilt.

“It’s not your fault,” Hotchner said. “Jeremy Felton made his own choices.” Though what he heard from Jarrett said was partially true.

“How well did you know his stepfather, Richard Cole?” Rossi asked.

Jarrett looked at Rossi as if he just took a karate chop to the throat.

“We talked a little bit back then,” Jarrett finally responded. “I see him around once in a while.”

Beth Jarrett then said, “Cole was here the other night.” Jarrett looked at his wife, as if he didn’t want her mentioning that.

“He was?” Rossi asked.

“He was,” Jarrett replied. “He wanted to come in and talk. but me and Beth were about to have dinner.”

“Any idea about what?” Hotchner asked.

“About Jeremy. Why, I don’t know.” Jarrett shrugged, but not convincingly.

Both agents were getting the idea that Kevin Jarrett was holding something back. He was upfront about pushing Jeremy around back in school, but was withholding something else. Something he didn’t want to bring up in front of his wife or anyone else for that matter.

“Have you talked to Tom Bornowski or Nick Leland?” Hotchner asked.

“I have,” Jarrett replied. “They came by a couple of days ago, wanted to see how I was doing.” He was getting anxious again, something he couldn’t hide from either agent. His wife could see he was worried, but she was seemingly underestimating his anxiety.

“That’s it?” Hotchner asked.

“That’s all,” Jarrett replied. 

“You called them your so-called friends,” Hotchner pointed out.

“Wrong crowd in school.”

Rossi’s cell phone beeped. He stood up as he checked his phone. It was Morgan.

“I have to take this.” Rossi stepped aside and took the call, as Hotchner continued talking with Kevin Jarrett.

“The two people murdered were Jeff Walsh and Rob Bowman,” Hotchner said. “How well did you know them?”

“I knew them,” Jarrett replied. “Nick and Tom knew them better.” Hotchnew looked at Jarrett as he answered. How Jarrett was managing to keep it together in front of his wife, as well as them, was confounding to say the least.

“Hotch,” Rossi said as he put his phone away, “something’s come up. We got to go.”

Hotchner stood up and handed Jarrett a business card. “If you think of anything else, please give us a call. Thank you for your time.”

“I will,” he returned. Beth Jarrett showed them to the door and the agents departed.

Once outside, Rossi informed Hotchner of the death of Tom Bornowski.

“Did you see how Jarrett was about to fall apart?” Hotchner asked as they got inside the SUV.

“I did,” Rossi replied. “He obviously knows more than he’s letting on.”

“More than he wants his wife to know.”

_____________________________________________

The agents convened at the home of Tom Bornowski, as well as police from both Auburn and Covington. 

Morgan reported, “From what we found, our unsub came through the back door. He jimmied the lock to get inside.”

“He must have been waiting for Bornowski,” J.J. added. “Once he got inside, the unsub jumped him and did that.”

Bornowski’s body had been turned over by the medical examiner. The front of his face, bloodied and bruised, had been beaten to the proverbial pulp.

“Our unsub had a lot of rage to do this to him,” Reid said, as he looked over the body. “Bornowski must have been taken completely by surprise.”

“The officers couldn’t find any weapons here belonging to Bornowski,” Pearson said to Hotchner. 

“Doubt it would have helped him,” Rossi said. “Whoever did this was really angry.”

Reid said, “It looks like Bornowski got a few licks in. His knuckles looked bruised.”

“Good for us,” Hotchner said. “There could be DNA.”

“Better still,’ Blake said. “One of the crime scene techs said he found some blood near the back door. Our unsub may be bleeding.”

“We’ll get a sample to the field office in Seattle,” Hotchner said. “If it belongs to our unsub, the lab might be able to tell us something with that.”

Hotchner and Pearson stepped outside of Bornowski’s house, as the crime scene techs looked for more evidence and the other officers kept the onlookers at bay.

“So, what now?” Pearson asked. “Wait for him to kill somebody else?”

“We may have to,” Hotchner replied. “But put someone on Nick Leland. Maybe we catch our unsub in the act. Same with Kevin Jarrett.”

Hotchner took out his cell phone and called Garcia.

“Speak and be recognized,” she greeted.

“Run a background check on Richard Cole, Jeremy Felton’s stepfather,” Hotchner said to her. “See if he crossed paths with Julie Felton before she married him.”

“Will do,” Garcia said.

Outside the house on the street, unbeknownst to the agents and the police officers, Richard Cole drove his truck past the crime scene, then headed home.

_______________________________________

“What do you hope Garcia will find?” Rossi asked Hotchner on the drive back to Auburn.

“I thought about this before when I first went after Jeremy Felton,” Hotchner replied. “James Felton disappears, Richard Cole shows up, and Felton is never heard from again. If Cole did have something to do with James Felton’s disappearance, maybe we can arrest him for that. There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

“Sounds like a longshot.”

“It is. I should have followed up on that the first time.”

“You didn’t know it would have a bearing on this case.”

“Still….”

“Stop second guessing yourself. We’ll get to the truth and we’ll find this unsub.”

Hotchner nodded. Still, Rossi could see this case was getting to him.

__________________________________________

Nick Leland answered his cell phone on the second ring. 

“Nick? It’s Cole.”

“What’s up?"

“Tom’s dead."

There was a pause. Then Nick Leland said, “Cops know?”

“They were all over Tom’s place.”

“Does Kevin know?”

“We’ll tell him if the cops don’t.”

“Any ideas who did this?”

Richard Cole told him.

“He’s dead,” Leland said.

“I know,” Cole said back. “This time, I’ll make sure it takes.”


	9. Chapter 9

The next morning, Hotchner called Jack on his phone before school.

“Jack?”

“Hi dad. How are you doing?”

“Have you caught the bad guy yet?”

“Not yet. I’m working on it. How was school yesterday?”

“It was okay. I’m learning how to divide numbers.”

“That’s good.”

“When are you coming home?”

“Soon. When I catch the bad guy.”

“Okay daddy. I have to go to school now. ‘Bye.”

“’Bye, Jack. I love you.”

"I love you too daddy."

____________________________________

“I have the case file on James Felton’s disappearance,” Reid said. The agents were back at the Auburn Police Station, inside the conference room, along with deputy chief Pearson.

“He disappeared on May 23, 2002,” Pearson said. “Felton worked for the city as an auditor, made good money at it. That day, he left work and never made it home. They found his car two days later in Fall City. No prints, no sign of foul play. He just up and vanished.”

“No one just vanishes,” Reid said. “It’s a molecular impossibility.”

“I have Garcia looking up Richard Cole’s background,” Hotchner said. 

“My guys have answered a couple of domestic calls at their house when they were married,” Pearson said. “Nothing came of it. Maybe if we pushed harder, both mother and son would still be alive.”

“It’s not your fault,” Rossi said to him.

Hotchner’s cell phone rang. It was Garcia, calling from Quantico. “You’re on speaker, Garcia.”

“I looked up Richard Cole,” she replied. “If this guy’s a psycho, he hid it pretty well until he got married.”

She went through the highlights of Richard Cole’s life. Born in Tacoma, his family moved to Puyallup when he was twelve years old. He graduated from Rogers High School, went to Green River Community College, and eventually got a job in Auburn at the branch office of Puget Sound Energy, first as a meter reader, then to an office worker. He was fired from Puget Sound Energy after the death of Julie Felton, five years after he married her.

“Did he and James Felton ever cross paths?” Hotchner asked.

“No,” Garcia replied, “but I cross referenced Richard Cole and Julie Felton before they married. Her maiden name was Julie Wilkes. She went to Puyallup High School, and Puyallup and Rogers are big athletic rivals. He must have crossed paths with her and she didn’t know it.”

“He must have seen her when they were younger and became obsessed with her from then on,” Morgan theorized. “He didn’t come forward to Julie until he got rid of James.”

“So how did he get rid of James Felton?” Rossi asked.

“I’m going through his financials, bank statements, phone records,” Garcia replied from Quantico. “If he left a paper trail or cyber trail, I’ll find it.”

Hotchner said, “Let us know, Garcia.” 

After she hung up, the agents continued on in their current case.

“Other than that blood we found on the back door,” said Blake, “there’s nothing at the crime scene that can tell us who killed Tom Bornowski.”

“It’s like you said,” Pearson pointed out, “whoever killed him must have taken him by surprise and just wailed on him.”

“So the obvious question is, who wanted him and the others dead, and how badly?” Morgan stated.

“The only thing the victims have in common is Jeremy Felton and he’s dead,” added J.J.

“And yet, Rob Bowman wrote down ‘Jeremy’ before he died,” Rossi pointed out.

“Maybe the unsub looked like Jeremy?” Blake suggested.

Hotchner took a look at the board when the pictures of the crime scenes and victims were pinned up. Also up there was a photo of Jeremy Felton.

“Is there a picture of James Felton in the file?” he asked.

“I think so,” Pearson said. He went through the files and pulled out an 8x10 photo. “Here it is.”

Hotchner pinned up the photo of James Felton next to the one of Jeremy Felton. The photo of James Felton was taken prior to his disappearance, Jeremy’s was the mugshot taken at the time of his arrest, after he had been cleaned up a bit. Both father and son had the same color hair, and same color of eyes. There was some facial resemblance between the two, suggesting that Jeremy had inherited some of his father’s genes and traits, but in the overall sense, no one could mistake James for Jeremy.

“When he was dying,” Reid said, “maybe Bowman got the idea that Jeremy really did come back from the dead for him. He could have been in a delusional state.”

“Sounds plausible,” Hotchner said. 

“Maybe we could ask both Leland and Cole,” Morgan suggested. “Keep them alive, for what it’s worth.”

Hotchner wanted to say, Cole is not worth keeping alive, but instead said, “Let’s ask him. Both of them, as well as Kevin Jarrett.”

“How much does Jarrett know?” Morgan asked.

Hotchner replied, “I don’t know, but he doesn’t want his wife to know about it.”

______________________________________

Kevin Jarrett was home, taking care of his son, when his cell phone rang at 11 a.m.

“Hello?”

“Kev, it’s Nick. Did you hear?”

“Tom’s dead, I know.” Jarrett said. “What happened?”

“Don’t know. Where are you now?”

“Home. Why? Are you coming here?”

“I’m at work. Look out your front window. Is there a police car out there?”

Jarrett left the baby in the crib and went to the front window. Across the street, was an Auburn police cruiser.

“There is,” Jarrett replied. “Why is that?”

“I got one keeping an eye on me as well,” Leland replied. “They’ve been following me all day.”

“And what about Cole?” 

“I think the cops are watching him too.”

“Maybe I should turn myself in – “

“NO!” Leland quickly said. “Just keep what you’re doing and don’t do anything stupid!”

“Stupid?! Hey, I didn’t kill anyone!”

“Still, don’t do anything stupid! Just carry on and don’t sweat it. I’ll be in touch.” 

Jarrett turned off his cell phone. He didn’t know how close the police were to finding out, but he was sick of keeping the secret. The secret he didn’t want to be part of. 

But he also knew he didn’t want to die. Especially at the hands of someone who was already dead. 

Or supposed to be dead.

___________________________________

Richard Cole was back at the landfill, directing garbage trucks where to dump their loads from the day, when he saw a black SUV drive up and stop.

Rossi and Morgan got out of the vehicle and headed right to Cole.

“What are you doing back here?” Cole demanded.

“We’re worried about you,” Morgan replied.

“Where’s Hotchner?”

“Be glad we didn’t bring him,” Rossi replied. “Looking over your shoulder lately?”

“What for?” Cole returned.

“Another guy who knew Jeremy Felton back in school was found dead. That’s three in the past week.”

“So?”

“So, aren’t you worried? Three guys who liked to smack around Jeremy are dead, and you might be next.”

“I doubt it,” Cole sneered.

“Famous last words,” Morgan countered. 

“Come on, Morgan,” Rossi said, “let’s go. If he wants to get himself killed, let him.”

“I’m not afraid of him, dead or alive.” Cole said to them.

Rossi and Morgan looked at Cole. “Whoever is doing this,” Rossi said, “he isn’t dead.”

“Any guesses?” Morgan asked.

Cole responded, “Get lost.”

“We’ll be seeing you,” Morgan promised. The agents got back in the SUV and left.

“You think he’s scared?” Morgan asked Rossi.

“No,” Rossi replied, “but I think he has an idea of who’s doing this.”

___________________________________

It was two o’clock when Nick Leland came home early from work. His supervisor let him go that day after sweeping up roads north of Auburn. It was starting to rain when he went inside his house. Once inside, his cell phone began to ring.

“Nick, it’s Cole.”

“What’s up?” Leland asked.

“I got a visit from the FBI again,” Cole replied. “You got cops following you?”

“I do. Work and home. They’re parked outside my house. Now what?”

“Just act natural.”

“They’re following Jarrett as well.”

“That loser. Why didn’t we just….Oh well. We’ll just ride it out.”

“What if Jarrett says something?”

“I’ll talk to him. But I’m coming over first. Be there around four.”

“See ya later.”

Leland clicked off his phone. He took off his coat, tossed it on a chair, and went straight to the refrigerator. He opened it up, took out a bottle of beer and turned around – 

The chair smashed across his body, completely stunning him, as he fell down on the floor on the seat of his pants. He looked up at who attacked him. 

As soon as Leland saw the man’s face, he realized who he was. Cole was right, this guy was supposed to be dead. And soon, he would be as well.


	10. Chapter 10

It was three o’clock when the agents and deputy chief Pearson got a call from the officers watching over Nick Leland’s home. There was a disturbance inside and they needed to get there right away.

With fifteen minutes, the BAU agents and Pearson had arrived at Leland’s house, along with other Auburn police officers, and saw what had transpired inside.

“A mail carrier had arrived at the house,” one of the officers was telling Pearson, “and was placing the mail in the door slot, when the door opened up. There was this guy, all dirty, and he was shocked to see the mailman and vice-versa. The guy slammed the door. The mailman ran from the house, saw our police cruiser on the street, and told us. He said the guy was all bloodied all over his shirt…”

“…and my officers got inside the house and found Leland,” Pearson told the agents. 

The agents looked over the crime scene. Nick Leland was on the floor of the kitchen, all bloodied and beaten to death. Pieces of a chair was scattered all over the floor as well.

“Our unsub smashed the chair on him,” Morgan said, “stunned him, and finished him off with his bare hands.”

“One of the officers said the back door was jimmied and still open when they got inside,” Blake said. “They’re dusting for prints but they also found blood as well.”

Hotchner looked down at the dead body of Nick Leland on the kitchen floor. Two were now left, Cole and Jarrett. Cole he didn’t care about; Jarrett, he needed alive.

“Rossi, get Kevin Jarrett and bring him in,” Hotchner said. 

“I’ll go with him,” J.J. volunteered. The two agents left.

________________________________

With his wife yet to come back from her workplace, Kevin Jarrett was on baby duty with little Micah.

It was four o’clock when he had changed their son’s diapers. He carried him from their bedroom to his playpen, finally quiet after a crying fit during the changing.

“Don’t worry, it’s all better now,” Jarrett told his one-year old son to his playpen, set up in the living room of their home. He set his son down inside the playpen and quickly went over to the kitchen for a bottle of water.

He reached inside the refrigerator when he heard Micah crying again. The baby didn’t need another changing, did he?

Maybe he was hungry. Kevin instead got a bottle of formula out of the refrigerator and set it down on the counter. There was more crying from the baby.

“I’m coming!” Kevin called out. He walked back over to the living room. Inside the playpen, little Micah was crying.  
“What’s wrong?” he said to his son as he leaned over the playpen, reaching down to pick him up. “There, there, it’s all going to be fine.” He picked him up from the playpen and turned around – 

And there he was.

He was about ten feet in front of Kevin Jarrett. He was wearing a dirty brown coat that had seen better days, as did the jeans and shoes. His hair was an obvious mess, his face not much better. 

Kevin Jarrett, knowing who he was, gasped in horror.

“NO!” he screamed at him. “Please, no! I didn’t know! Cole just told me to do it! That’s all!”

The unsub took a step towards him.

“I didn’t know they were going to kill her!” he screamed. “I wasn’t there! I didn’t know!”

Jarrett’s knees buckled, dropping to his knees, as he still held his son. That was all between him and certain death, and in his mind, a deserved one at that.

“What are you doing here!” Jarrett demanded, wondering if these would be his last words ever on Earth. “How did you get out?”

The unsub took another step at him.

“How!? What are you doing here?!” Jarrett screamed. “You’re supposed to be dead!...”

_____________________________________________

The SUV pulled up to the Jarrett residence at 4:15 p.m. At about the same time, a small beige Honda pulled into the driveway as well. Rossi and J.J. got out of the SUV, as Beth Jarrett got out of her car.

“Agent Rossi, what are you doing back here?” Beth Jarrett asked the agents as they approached her.

“We’d like to speak to your husband again,” Rossi replied.

“He should be in,” Beth replied. They all walked up to the front door of the house – which they noticed was slightly ajar.

“Stand back Mrs. Jarrett,” Rossi said, as he pulled out his service weapon. J.J. took Mrs. Jarrett out of harm’s way. 

Rossi opened the door slowly, pointing his gun into the house. Immediately, he could hear the crying of a baby. He stepped inside, on guard for whoever might be inside.

He entered the living room of the house. He could hear more cries mixed in with the baby’s. He saw the playpen, with the baby inside, crying. Then he saw Kevin Jarrett, crying as well, in the fetal position on the floor.

“J.J.! Get an ambulance!” Rossi called out, as he holstered his weapon. He knelt down on the floor, and tried to help up Jarrett, who was crying and visibly shaken by his near-death experience.

“It was him!” Jarrett cried out, as Rossi sat him up.

“Who?”

“Jeremy!” Jarrett replied. “Jeremy Felton!”

“He’s dead,” Rossi reminded him.

“It was him!” Jarrett insisted. “I looked straight at him! He was going to kill me!”

Beth Jarrett came into the house, followed by J.J. “The ambulance is on its way,” J.J. said to Rossi.

Beth exclaimed, “Oh my God, what happened?”

“Someone tried to kill your husband,” Rossi said. He looked at Jarrett. “Why didn’t he kill you?”

“He should have!” Jarrett cried. “I deserve it. We were just kids. We just pushed him around. I didn’t know he was going to turn into a psycho!”

“That’s not your fault,” Rossi said. “And Jeremy Felton isn’t the one doing this – “

“It was him! I saw him!”

“That’s your guilty conscience talking,” Rossi countered.

Beth Jarrett leaned over the rail of the playpen and picked up her crying son. Her crying husband would have to wait his turn.

________________________________________________

The paramedics checked out Kevin Jarrett, and determined he was physically fine. Emotionally, he was a mess. After he was cleared by the paramedics, Rossi and J.J. took Kevin Jarrett down to Auburn Police Headquarters, with his wife and son following in another car.

Jarrett was placed in an interrogation room. On the other side of the one-way mirror, Hotchner, Rossi, and Deputy Chief Pearson, looked at him.

“The guy’s a mess,” Pearson told the agents. “I asked him if he wanted a lawyer, but he said no.”

“Our unsub could’ve killed him right in his own home,” Rossi said. “The sight of the crying baby must have made him back down.”

“Jarrett wants to talk,” Hotchner said. “Let’s see what he has to say.”

All three of them entered the interrogation room.

In the meantime, the other agents were in the conference room, discussing what they had discovered earlier in the day.

“I just talked to Mrs. Jarrett,” J.J. told them. “She said when they first met, Kevin was kind of a broken person.”

“Let me guess,” Morgan said. “They met seven years ago after Jeremy got arrested.”

“They met at Highline College over in Des Moines,” J.J. continued. “It sounded meeting her was the best thing that ever happened to him. He straightened out and built a good life, got a good job at Boeing, had a family.”

“He was trying to put his bad behavior behind him,” Reid theorized. “He felt guilty about what he had done to Jeremy.”

“Unlike his friends,” Blake pointed out. “But what made him think that Jeremy was the one trying to kill him?”

Morgan said, “He saw the unsub, and in his mind, thought it was the ghost of Jeremy coming for revenge.”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Reid said.

“I know, Reid. But Jarrett believes it.”

“He feels that because of what he did to Jeremy,” Blake said, “he deserves to be punished, even though he didn’t really turn Jeremy into a murderer.”

“Felton made that choice himself,” J.J. said.

“So who was really trying to kill him?” asked Blake.

Inside the interrogation room, Jarrett was unloading on the agents and Pearson.

“I should have let him kill me,” Jarrett said to them.

“You don’t deserve that,” Rossi said.

“After what happened, maybe I do,” Jarrett said. “We just kept smacking him around, not caring what the consequences were.”

“Now it’s all catching up to you,” Pearson said.

“We didn’t know he was going to crack and start killing people. Not that we cared.”

“And nobody was going to stop you, right?” Rossi said.

Jarrett was going to say something then stopped. 

“What?” Pearson asked.

"They killed her,” Jarrett said.

“Who?” Hotchner demanded. “And who did they kill?”

Jarrett paused then said, “There was this teacher. Mrs. Peterson. She busted me and Nick and Tom for pushing around Jeremy. She reamed us pretty good. She was always helping Jeremy, trying to get him straightened out despite what was going on at home. For a while, she watched us like a hawk, making we sure we didn’t go near Jeremy. Then a couple of days later, I heard she got killed.”

“Did Nick and Tom have something to do with it?” Pearson asked.

“They did. They told me that she visited their parents, and they got in even bigger trouble. Then Mrs. Peterson had visited Jeremy at home. They told me she had seen Jeremy’s mom, and she was in bad shape. Then Jeremy’s stepfather found out, and they said he was really pissed. I don’t know what she saw at their house, but Cole was afraid she was going to call social services of something like that. So, he called all of us, Nick, Tom, Jeff, Rob, but I couldn’t go because my parents had grounded me. The next day, I hear she’s dead, and Nick and Tom tell me they took care of it.”

“They killed her?” Hotchner asked.

“They didn’t come out and say it, but they were glad she was gone,” Jarrett said. “I wasn’t there, but I felt I was just as guilty. And in a way, I was.”

“You didn’t know and it’s not your fault,” Rossi said to Jarrett. 

“But I pushed him around,” Jarret said back. “It’s what Cole wanted.”

Hotchner asked “What do you mean?”

Jarrett looked at Hotchner. “It’s what he wanted us to do,” he said. “Cole told us he didn’t want the memory of Jeremy’s father around.”

“How did you end up knowing a jerk like Cole anyway?” Pearson asked.

“We knew him from around, you know?” Jarrett replied. “He would get us beer for and we’d drink it. Maybe even smoke a little pot. But when he married Jeremy’s mom, he didn’t like being compared to her first husband. He never liked the guy.”

“Did he kill Jeremy’s father?” Hotchner asked.

“I don’t know. He was glad he was gone, but he wanted to erase him from their memories.”

“So he smacked Julie and Jeremy around,” concluded Hotchner.

“But it wasn’t enough when it came to Jeremy,” Jarrett said. “I don’t know what bug got up his butt about Jeremy, but some reason he couldn’t stand him. Maybe because he wasn’t his own flesh and blood.” He looked at Hotchner. “He told us to make Jeremy’s life miserable whenever we could, just to remind him who is father was now, not then.”

Something in Hotchner began to boil inside. A good man became a good father to a son, much like he did, but along came Richard Cole, killed (probably) James Felton, married Felton’s widow, and proceeded to beat his stepson just because he was stepson. Hotch loved being a father, but he despised men who gave fatherhood a bad name.

“Have you talked to Richard Cole lately?” Rossi asked.

“No, and I don’t want to see him again,” Jarrett replied. “Unless its at his trial.”


	11. Chapter 11

“We’re not going to charge him?’ asked Pearson, as they left Jarrett in the interrogation room. 

“No,” Hotchner said. “His guilt is punishing him already. Still, we can hold him until he’s no longer in danger.”

Hotchner and Rossi returned to the conference room, with Pearson close behind. Hotchner’s cell phone rang as they entered.

“Hotchner,” he answered. “Yes?.... What do the tests say?.... They do?” There was a shocked look on Hotchner’s face. “Are you sure?...Okay, thank you.” He put away his phone and looked at the others.

“That was the lab in Seattle,” he said. “The DNA tests came back on the blood sample at the Leland house.”

“Whose blood was it?” Blake asked.

“It’s not in CODIS,” Hotchner replied, “but they said the blood belonged to a male relative of Jeremy Felton.”

Everyone in the conference room had a surprised look on their face.

“Relative? As in a brother?” J.J. asked.

“Jeremy Felton was an only child,” Pearson said.

“Who does that leave?” Morgan asked.

There was an uneasy silence, along with the only answer possible.

“His father?” Reid said. “His real father?”

“That would make sense,” Rossi said. “If it is the biological father, where has he been all this time?”

“There was something else too – ,” Hotchner said. But he was interrupted by the ringing of Morgan’s cell phone. It was Garcia calling from Quantico.

“What’s up baby girl?” Morgan asked. “You’re on speaker.”

She replied, “Just finished up gathering background info on Richard Cole, and I think I found a paper trail that may lead to James Felton.”

“What is it Garcia?”

“I checked the days around when James Felton disappeared,” she said. “Richard Cole’s credit card showed he was in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, a day after Felton went missing. He bought gas there at an ARCO station. He also bought gas and had lunch in Ellensburg some hours later.”

“He must have moved Felton’s body out of state, thinking he was dead,” Reid said. “Except he wasn’t dead.”

“Anything in Coeur D’Alene or Ellensburg?” Hotchner asked.

“The only thing in Ellensburg is Central Washington University,” Garcia replied. “But in Coeur D’Alene, I did find a place of interest. It was Sandstone Hill, a private mental institution. There was an investigation by the Idaho State Attorney General’s office, as they were keeping patients overly sedated and unconscious, on orders by the people who put them there. Namely their relatives who had them declared mentally incompetent so they can get a hold of their money or their property.

“Anyway, the state of Idaho’s investigation was about to shut them down,” Garcia continued, “when a head count of patients there came up one short. They looked for the ID and they had him listed as a John Doe. But they had a photo of him and it was – “

“James Felton,” Hotchner guessed.

“He escaped a month before this whole thing started,” Garcia said. “But police in Idaho and Washington haven’t been able to find him.”

“I think we just did,” Rossi said.

“When exactly did he escape?” Hotchner asked.

There was some furious clicking on the keyboard from Garcia’s end. “March twelfth.”

“A week before Jeremy’s execution,” Hotchner noted.

“He must have found out about his son being executed and his wife being dead, and that was his stressor,” J.J. said. “He came back to Auburn, and found out what led to his son becoming a murderer.”

“He found out who pushed him around and went after them,” Reid said.

“He’s probably saving Richard Cole for last,” Morgan said.

“He may not have much time to do so,” Hotchner added.

The agents all looked at Hotchner.

“In addition to making a DNA match,” he said, “the lab in Seattle also found cancer cells in the blood. James Felton could be dying.”

“So where could Felton could be hiding?” Morgan asked.

Hotchner replied, “There is one place.”

___________________________________________

The agents got in the SUV’s and headed towards Covington, specifically the home of Julie Felton’s sister, Kathy Kirkman. It was close to seven o’clock and already getting dark. In addition, raindrops began to fall from the Washington state sky.

“Do you think she knows?” Morgan asked Hotchner as he drove.

“That her brother in law is alive?” Hotchner returned. “If not before, she does now.”

“Are we going to charge her?” J.J asked.

“First things first. First, we find James Felton.”

“Scary thought,” said J.J. “What if Richard Cole finds him first? What if he suspects that James Felton is still alive after all this time?”

Hotchner’s cell phone rang. It was Garcia from Quantico again.

“Sir, I just uncovered some more information about James Felton,” she said, “but I think it says more about Richard Cole than anything.”

“What do you mean?” Hotchner asked.

“I found this newspaper story in the Tacoma News-Tribune about James Felton from when he was in high school,” Garcia reported. “He played baseball for his school. Anyway, he had this nickname, and looking at it, it may explain why Cole abused his son.”

“What was his nickname?” Morgan asked.

Garcia told them the nickname. Upon hearing, the agents were somewhat stunned.

“No wonder he hated Jeremy,” Hotchner said.

______________________________________

Kathy Kirkman had been home since five o’clock that night. She had relaxed in front of the television, watching the news.

There was a live report on KIRO about a murder in Auburn, the fourth in the past weeks, and its possible connection to the grave robbing of Jeremy Felton’s body at Mountain View Cemetery. She watched a little bit of that, then changed the channel to another station. KOMO was reporting on the same thing. 

She clicked off the TV, not wanting to hear about what had been happening in Auburn. She proceeded to fall asleep on the sofa.

Kathy woke up just after 7 p.m. It was already dark outside and rain was beginning to fall.

She went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She took out a bottle of water, and opened it. As Kathy went back to the living room, she took a drink from the bottle and –

She was suddenly grabbed and her back was slammed up against the wall, held by her collar by two hands.

“Where is he!?” Richard Cole demanded.

“Nice to see you too,” Kathy retorted.

“Where is he?!”

“Okay, I’ll play along. Who are you looking for?”

“Don’t play games with me! Tell me where he is.”

There was a nasty pause, as Kathy stared into Richard Cole’s angry eyes. She wasn’t scared of him then, and she wasn’t now.

Kathy said, “Say his name.”

“What?”

“Say his name.”

“Where is he?”

“You can’t say his name, can you? You’re that scared of it?”

“Tell me where he is or I’ll kill you!”

“Like you did to my sister, or my nephew?! Say his name! You can do it. Or are you too scared that he’s coming for you?”

“WHERE IS HE?” Cole screamed at her.

“SAY HIS NAME!” Kathy demanded.

Richard Cole was losing whatever patience he had. But finally, he yelled at her, “WHERE IS HE? WHERE….IS….JEREMY?”

Then there was another voice. “I’m right here.”

Cole turned to see who was there. He was standing a few feet away, shadows hiding his features.

“You….,” Cole growled, partly out of anger, partly out of fear.

Someone who was supposed to be dead, was standing right there. He stepped forward, his facial features now visible. His clothes were ragged and dirty. But his face was unmistakable. It was the man Cole thought he killed all those years ago.

He said, “What’s the matter Richard? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

It was James _“Jeremy”_ Felton.


	12. Chapter 12

It was a quarter past seven, as the SUV’s and a couple of police cars came up to the Kirkman residence, sirens blaring as they went into the neighborhood. The rain was now coming down steadily, as the agents, Pearson and a couple of officers from the Auburn police went towards the house. A couple of cars from the Maple Valley police were there as well.

Hotchner and Rossi were walking up to the front door when they noticed it was slightly ajar.

“Morgan! J.J.! Take the back door!” Hotchner ordered as he and Rossi drew their sidearms. Morgan and J.J. went around to the back of the house.

Hotchner went in first, his weapon pointed ahead. “Mrs. Kirkman!” he called out.

“In here!” Kathy Kirkman was calling out from the living room.

Hotchner and Rossi, followed by Reid, Blake, and Pearson, went to the living room. Kathy Kirkman was on the floor, trying to get up. 

“What happened?” Rossi asked, as he helped up Kathy.

“Cole was here,” Kathy replied. “He wanted to know where James was. He threatened to kill me.”

“Where is he?” Rossi asked.

“Fireplace,” she responded.

Reid and Blake went to the fireplace. “He’s here!” Blake called out.

“Felton?” Hotchner asked.

Reid answered, “No, it's Cole.”

Hotchner sat Kathy down on a sofa, and went over to where Blake and Reid were.

Richard Cole was on the ground, flat on his back, beaten and bruised, and definitely dead. Blood trickled from his nose, but not as much than out of his chest. A small iron implement was embedded into his chest.

“He stabbed him with a fireplace poker,” Blake noted.

“More than that,” Reid added. “He yanked it up and it must have hooked on one of his ribs.” A part of Cole’s chest seemed displaced upwardly.

Morgan and J.J. came in through the back door into the living room. “Back door was open,” Morgan reported. “Looks like Cole got in the back door.”

“And Felton went out the front,” Hotchner added. He went back to Kathy Kirkman. She was on the sofa, trying to catch her breath.

“Where’s Felton?” he asked her.

“He saved my life,” she said back.

“We can see that,” Rossi said. “But where is he?”

“How long has he been here?” Hotchner added.

Kathy Kirkman composed herself, then said, “He showed up here when I came home. It was the day you talked to me. He already knew Jeremy was dead.”

“The son he named after his grandfather,” Hotchner noted. According to the newspaper story, James Felton was nicknamed Jeremy from his grandfather. 

“Yes. I knew Richard hated James, but he knew him as Jeremy. He thought when he got rid of James, that would be it. But the name Jeremy stuck with him, and he couldn’t stand Jeremy just because of that.”

“So he abused Jeremy because of the name,” Rossi said. “Lovely guy.”

“I told him James could stay, but to be careful,” Kathy said. “When I heard about the murders, I didn’t ask and he didn’t tell.”

“But you figured it out,” Pearson said.

Kathy nodded. “I figured out he was going to go after Richard eventually. Good thing he showed up when Richard did.”

Hotchner asked, “Did James tell you he was dying?”

“I kind of figured that out too. He didn’t look too good when he showed up. He was in pain at times. He couldn’t hold food down after he ate.”

“Do you have any idea where he went.?” Hotchner asked.

Kathy shook her head. “I don’t know. But can’t you just let him be?”

A uniformed officer came inside and said something to Pearson. The deputy chief went over to Hotchner.

Pearson said, “Agent Hotchner, one of the neighbors said that a blue truck parked outside the house left just before we got here. It was her husband’s truck.”

Hotchner looked around the living room. He didn’t know what he was looking for but he would know when he saw it.

Above the fireplace was a mantle, with a couple of candleholders on opposite sides. There was a small mat in the middle but nothing on top of it.

He remembered what Kathy Kirkman had told him in the school district office. _I have her ashes. After she died, I took control of her remains. I have an urn back home, so she can be close to me, not near him. It’s over my fireplace._

“He took your sister’s ashes with him,” Hotchner said. He remembered more about their conversation, and the photo of the three of them at Shadow Lake, where James Felton wanted to build his dream house.

“Get an APB out on that truck,” Hotchner quickly ordered. “I think I know where he is.”

Pearson quickly got the APB out on the Kirkman’s truck, with an order to approach with caution. Outside, the rain was coming down harder.

“How far is Shadow Lake from here?” Hotchner asked.

“Other side of Highway 18,” Pearson quickly replied. 

“He’s there,” Hotchner said. 

______________________________________

Reid and Blake stayed behind at the Kirkman house to watch over Kathy Kirkman as the paramedics tended to her, and the coroner took away Richard Cole’s body. Hotchner, Rossi, Morgan, and J.J., along with Pearson, took off for Shadow Lake to get to James Felton.

Shadow Lake was surrounded on all sides by thick forests of trees, with scattered houses around the perimeter. If James Felton was hiding there, he could be hard to find.

A report came over the radio that Kirkman’s truck had been spotted along a road on the north side of the lake. The agents and Pearson arrived at the spot, as the rain seemed to be coming down harder. The agents put on coats over the Kevlar vests. A King County Sheriff cruiser had come upon the scene first and reported the find.

A patrolman told them, “We found the truck abandoned, the keys still in the ignition. No sign of the suspect.”

“Spread out,” Pearson ordered. “Our suspect is injured, possibly dying, but should still be considered armed and dangerous.”

“If you find him, wait for backup,” Hotchner ordered. “GO!”

Each of them had guns, flashlights, and radios. They went into the woods towards the lake, searching for James Felton.

Hotchner went ahead among the group, his flashlight shining a path in the dense underbrush, sheets of rain coming down, his gun in the other hand. He ignored the fact that he became doused in the Washington rain. As he advanced, Hotchner wondered about James Felton. Was he really that much of a monster? He was a man whose life was taken away from him by Richard Cole, and was kept prisoner in a mental institution while his wife and son were abused, and driven to suicide and murder. He was a father, much like Hotchner, fighting for his family. But Felton had killed five people, all out of revenge for what Richard Cole had done to him and his family.

James Felton was the worst kind of serial killer: the kind who was far more sympathetic than the people he killed.

Hotchner kept his eyes focused forward, but alert all around him, as Felton could be anywhere in these woods.

He saw something moving ahead of him. Despite the darkness, he was able to make the figure out.

“Felton!” Hotchner called out. 

The figure stopped, then seemed to sink into the ground ahead. Hotchner moved ahead quickly but carefully, his weapon ready to fire. 

There was a clearing ahead, the lake barely visible from there. Hotchner stepped into the clearing, and saw Felton. And the grave.

Felton was sitting on his side next to the grave, holding the urn of his wife’s ashes close to him. There was a makeshift cross of two sticks tied together, and planted on the grave. He was sobbing, as Hotchner could make out blood on the coat that Felton was wearing. His clothes were soaked with rain and mud.

“He’s here, Julie,” Felton said, as the rain pounded upon them. “I brought him back. We’re all together again.”

“Felton!” Hotchner aimed his gun at Felton. 

Felton looked over to Hotchner. “We’re together,” he said to Hotchner. “I don’t want to leave them ever again.”

“You won’t.”

“He took them away from me,” James Felton said weakly. “I couldn’t save them. But now we’re together. Me, my son, and my wife.” He looked back at the grave. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there, son. But I’m here now. I’m here for you now.”

Felton began to sink down. “I brought your mom here. We won’t ever be apart ever again.” His voice began to weaken further.

“Hotch!” Morgan called out. 

“Over here!” Hotchner returned, keeping his eyes on Felton. He lowered his gun, knowing Felton was not going anywhere. 

“We’re all here,” Felton said. “I’m here. I won’t….I won’t be leaving again. I’ll never…leave again….” Felton’s eyes began to slowly close. “I’m here Jeremy….Your dad is here…”

Morgan, Rossi, J.J, and Pearson came up from behind Hotchner, as Felton’s eyes closed for good. 

Finally, James, Julie, and Jeremy Felton, were back together.


	13. Chapter 13

The bodies of the Feltons were removed from Shadow Lake and taken to the morgue at the Auburn Medical Center. As for Cole’s body, it was taken directly to the King County Medical Examiners. Pearson told the coroners he didn’t want Cole anywhere near the Feltons, even if they were all dead.

The agents had reassembled at the Auburn Police Headquarters after what had transpired at Shadow Lake.

Kevin Jarrett was released from custody and was told there would be no charges filed against him. Still, he felt bad about his role in making Jeremy Felton into a murderer. 

Morgan told him he was not at fault, that what happened to Jeremy Felton was beyond his control. If anyone was to blame, it was Richard Cole. 

“Just put it behind you,” Morgan said to him. “Be a good father to your son, and be a good husband to your wife.”

His wife Beth had pretty much forgiven him for what he had done in the past. Kevin forgiving himself for what he had done would take a little longer.

And with what Jarrett had told the agents, the murder case of Debbie Peterson had also been deemed solved and was now closed.

Kathy Kirkman was declared unhurt from her ordeal at the hands of Richard Cole. Almost immediately, she was making arrangements for her sister, her nephew and her brother in law to be buried together at Auburn’s Mountain View Cemetery.

A call came in from the coroner at the Auburn Medical Center. A preliminary look at James Felton’s corpse showed that he had cancerous tumors on his lungs and liver. When he had escaped from the asylum in Idaho, he was most likely terminal. The stress of murdering five people had hastened his death.

The agents and Pearson worked past midnight to finally put the case to rest. It was close to two in the morning, Saturday, when Hotchner declared it was time to go back to Quantico.

“Thanks for everything,” Deputy Chief Pearson said to Hotchner. “It’s finally over. Jeremy can finally rest. Both of them.”

“Glad we can be of assistance,” Hotchner returned, as the two men shook hands. 

“I’ll try to get a little sleep before my son’s baseball game today. Does your son play ball?”

“Soccer. I’m trying to get him into baseball as well.”

“You’re doing a good job of being a father.”

“I hope so.”

With that, the agents headed to Sea-Tac Airport for the flight back to Quantico.

__________________________________________

It was a quiet flight back to the east coast. Reid, J.J., Morgan, and Blake played some poker – as usual, Reid won, with the exception of a kings over jacks full house hand by Blake. Rossi jotted down some notes, probably for his next book.

Hotchner usually worked on a case report, but this time, he slept the whole flight back to Quantico.

The Gulfstream Jet landed at Quantico around three in the afternoon. The agents went back to the building to check on messages before heading home. Hotchner, on the other hand, took his briefcase and files, and headed straight home.

At his home, he opened the door, and called out to his son Jack. He was in the living room with his aunt Jessica.

Upon seeing him, Jack jumped down off the sofa and ran over to his father. Hotch embraced his son and gave him a long deserved hug.

“I’m home Jack,” he said. He said it, remembering the final seconds of James Felton’s life before he died.

Then Jack said something that, after this case, Hotch needed to hear.

__________________________________________________

Arthur Godfrey said, _“When you come home at night with only the shattered pieces of your hopes and dreams, he can mend them like new with those two magic words...” _  
_____________________________________________________

____

Jack said, “Hi dad.”

____


End file.
